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Dr. Vlad speaking at the Baku Conference |
Vlad Speaks at Conference in Azerbaijan, Meets with University Students in Turkey
Dr. Tudor Vlad, a research scientist at the University of Georgia, called for more coordination of journalism assistance projects and for increased knowledge of the local culture on the part of those delivering journalism training in comments he made at a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November.
Freedom of the press in Azerbaijan and in other former soviet countries, media laws in emerging democracies and in Western countries, the activities of organizations working to protect journalists’ rights, and journalism training and education were among the topics discussed at the Baku meeting.
About 40 Azeri journalists, legal experts, faculty and government representatives and 50 international guests participated in the conference. The participants expressed a variety of perspectives on freedom of the press in different countries, on how journalists are sometimes exposed to pressure, and on how legal system can protect or, on the contrary, weaken the independence of media organizations.
During the meeting, Dr. Vlad also talked with journalists and NGO representatives from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Russia about the research and training programs of the Cox Center and about potential collaboration in the future.
On November 17 and 18, Dr. Vlad was the guest of the Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. There, he met with Dr. Kemal Kirisci, director of the Center for European Studies, and with political science students. Dr. Vlad also participated in a discussion following a lecture on the architecture of the European Union, given by Dr. Michael Keating, professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Dr. Kirisci was a guest speaker at the University of Georgia in April of 2005, following an invitation from Dr. Lee Becker, the director of the Cox Center, Dr. Vlad told the Turkish students he “wished you had a journalism program at your university so we could develop a partnership with the Grady College.”
The Cox Center is the international outreach unit of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
